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As reported by TorrentFreak, a New York man's large-scale pirating of Ultimate Fighting Championship videos via The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents has landed him on the uncomfortable end of a $32 million lawsuit. From the article: "Known online as Secludedly, the man uploaded at least 124 events. As a result UFC parent Zuffa is hitting him with everything from copyright infringement, to fraud, to breach of contract. ... The lawsuit, which includes two other doe defendants and an unknown company Zuffa refers to as XYZ Corp (“a business entity, the exact nature of which is unknown”), centers around the unlawful recording (“capping”), uploading and distribution of more than 120 UFC events via two of the world’s biggest torrent sites. ... Also receiving a prominent mention from Zuffa is the fact that Secludedly allowed people to donate via a PayPal in order to help with the financing of future ripping and uploading activities."

In principle, yes. But $32m? This means ruining this person's life forever, and all because he uploaded some sport shows. Sorry no, murderers have it easier, fraudsters (especially very big ones) have it much much easier, etc. Uploading shows, well it is somehow wrong, but it shouldn't cost you your life.

That's just the risk inherent in doing something illegal. Sometimes someone gets caught, and that person needs to be made an example of to scare others away. Blame your government for cultivating a culture of fearmongering and backwards thinking.

But let's be honest. If he actually does get the $32m fine then that just means he'll be paying a small sum every month until he hits the statute of limitation.

That's just the risk inherent in doing something illegal. Sometimes someone gets caught, and that person needs to be made an example of to scare others away.

No, no, no. We're supposed to have a justice system. The punishment should always fit the crime, and people shouldn't arbitrarily be given harsher punishments just to deter others from committing the same crimes. That's unjust, and even if it is effective, we should reject it.

Blame your government for cultivating a culture of fearmongering and backwards thinking.

Our implementation of "justice" is overrated. Psychology repeatedly shows that punishment is not effective. Criminology suggests that recidivism does not become less likely as the punishment increases. A "rehabilitation system" is what's needed, and what's always been needed: if someone harms society, do what's needed and humane to discourage them from harming society again. Anything else is primitive, knuggle-dragging moronism.

A "rehabilitation system" is what's needed, and what's always been needed: if someone harms society, do what's needed and humane to discourage them from harming society again. Anything else is primitive, knuggle-dragging moronism.

You're so right!

I too, burn with the desire to punish those "tough on crime" knuckle dragging morons!

Pretty much any that engages the criminal with society under supervision and guidance rather than locking them away from it.It's not 100% effective, but arguably hard time and unpayable fines have a negative effectiveness.

It is not 100% effective and it isn't even proven to be better at all than a hard punitive system. All you have are the wild theories of some sociologists based on data and statistical methods that cannot be verified or adequately checked and even if they could do not point to this conclusion.

Actually, the Nordic countries (particularly Sweden) are considered almost luxurious by U.S. standards and include prisoners going to a 9-5 job and returning at night. Their recidivism rate is well below the U.S. rate. So there it is, a practical example.

Sure, crime rates are better there. On the other hand crime rates are even lower in the Emirates, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, for example where justice is punitive, much less interested in rehabilitation, and considerably harsher than in US.

In short you have no data to back up your assumption that rehabilitation produces better results.

And you none that the punitive approach works best. So I suggest defaulting to not treating people with needless cruelty, we're supposed to be civilized.

BTW, it seems that you are incorrect about Japan [wikipedia.org]. They seem to have had a problem of prisoner abuse but also appear to be attempting to reform the reformers. I don't know how successfully.

Japan is currently a punitive system just like US. There is about the same worry with rehab than there is in US, as happens with most of the countries with very low crime rates. Oh and although Finland and Denmark are relatively well regarding crimes, Sweden is one of the most violent countries in Western Europe, with one of the highest crime rates and Norway is at the top of rape statistics. And all Nordic countries have higher crime indexes than other Europeans countries which are more punitive and give l

Notably, Sweden's crime stats are distorted because some of the things taken quite seriously there are not even considered to rise to the level of crime in the U.S. For example, a simple spanking is a criminal assault in Sweden.

Given that the U.S. has a world leading rate of incarceration, it is clear that what we do here is a failure.

Sweden Murder rate is higher than Germany's, Spain's, Austria's, Slovenia's, Japan's, Singapore's, Hong Kong, The Emirates, Saudi Arabia, oh, and China`s. All countries that have at least the same posture than US regarding rehab. So basically, again, you have no argument.

Again trying to deviate from the point. Those countries do not focus on rehab and do not have more or better rehab programs than US. You can cherry pick as much as you like, but Sweden is in 31st position regarding homicides, there are 30 countries that are better than it, and most of those do not give a damn about rehab, and therefore your theory that rehab actually helps to combat crime is simply not supported by facts.

It is far more likely that rehab is completely orthogonal to crime control, and shou

Really? Then find me a single country that do not use punishments as crime control, a country that does not have jails and where crimes are well under control? The punishment part is present in ALL countries. The rehab part is missing from most inclusive from most of those that are at the bottom of the list of crime index.

It is basically psychology that doing both works better than doing either separately. It is your own brand of ignorance thinking that punishing bad behavior can be avoided if you want to have laws that are respected. Norway does punish bad behavior by the way, Breivik, for example, will stay in jail for the rest of his life. Even though theoretically he was charged with just 20 years or so of prison, his release is subjected by the approval of a committee.

This is an important point that should not be lightly passed over. Do uploaders harm society? Your comment appears to take it as a given that the answer is "yes". All your points about punishment and rehab may be relevant, if that's true. You say that punishment is not effective. Why isn't it effective? I suggest it is because in this instance the deed for which punishment is being meted out should not be a crime.

If uploaders do not harm society, then the situation is very different. In that case, the law is outdated, wrong, cruel, and a tool of evil oppressors. Those who are sowing confusion and preventing the laws from being reformed have their own obvious agenda of maintaining a status quo that unfairly enriches them at the expense of everyone else. Where is our digital public library? And punishment looks not like justice, but mere brutality, and will not convince anyone. As arguments go, punishment is one of the weakest. Certainly exposes the establishment as ideologically bankrupt. Their other arguments, that artists will starve and we'll not have any more art, and that copying is stealing, are being seen more and more as plain wrong. All they have left are threats. Threats and punishments don't make Christians out of unbelievers and heretics, they just drive heresy underground.

This is a lawsuit, and this is the amount of damages the plaintiff is asking for. This isn't a settlement amount or an award. Maybe wait to see what the final judgment in the case is before you whine about miscarriages of justice.

It isn't a fine. It is a business suing him for loss of income due to his practises. I am all for punishments fitting the crime, but I am also all for business seeking retribution for damages to their business, that isn't about punishment but about restitution. Whether the 32 million claim is ridiculous is up to a court to decide, but given it was 124 events it really doesn't take a lot to add up to that much.

As long as the retribution reflects the loss of income it is OK. Unfortunately nobody was able to prove to this day if there is a loss of income associated with this kind of piracy and much less how much it accounts for.

Give me a break? 124 events. Do you even watch or care about UFC events, or realize over half of those were aired over standard cable? Were not talking pay-per-view, he didn't feed the events live for free over the internet. And even the pay-per-view events are aired over standard cable after a few months. If I'm a lawyer I would mention this and keep it simple. Zuffa is going to stand there with a delusional amount 'we lost revenue, here look at this chart or project sales from these events that we didn't get because it was free to download'

They are still making their money from pay-per-view and the minutes of advertising during standard cable airing time, regardless of whether you watch it or not, or if you pirated the events. This is what pisses me off about these type of companies, if you don't like it stop putting out dvd's and or airing events/specials [which are the dvd's] on standard cable.

The way to protest their appalling behaviour is to NOT WATCH their shows. Not to pay a pirate to provide you with copies of them. This is a clear example of someone that crossed the line way to far by accepting payment for the pirated events. zero sympathy for him.

The punishment should always fit the crime, and people shouldn't arbitrarily be given harsher punishments just to deter others...

So should I take it from this that you disapprove of the notion of speeding fines being doubled during daylight hours inside of school zones? That is, after all, creating a harsher punishment to act as a deterrent.

Arguably, speeding is one thing, but speeding even when notified that children will be likely to be crossing the street adds an endangerment element. Thus, it's not just adding more deterrent, it's punishing a greater offense.

Let's say that one pay-per-view cost, say, $32 (for ease of the maths).

Let's say that a thousand people downloaded it (likely MUCH more). That is a direct loss of $32,000 to the content creator (without even needing to fabricate things, because that content was pay-per-view).

Let's say he did a thousand torrents (likely not much less). That's $32,000,000. Direct, provable, accountable loss. Without any form of exaggeration.

The fact is that he won't end up paying $32m. If he is asked to, he'll have to de

The only issue that I take with what you say isn't with your numbers of downloaders of the pirated content, rather that the availability of the pirated content has a 1:1 relationship with lost revenue.

As has been rehashed over the years, there are lots of people that will download content that is free to them that would never have paid for it in the first place. There are also lots of people that will download content and never really play that content.

Yeah, Right. And I am gonna sue people providing free drinking water for $ 14 Trillion. Otherwise all the world's 8 Billion people would have bought my lemonade for $1 per bottle, 5 times everyday.Plus my costs for launching this MMSS (massively multi lawyer silly suit).

Given the number of peers I see on fresh UFC and WWE torrents, 1000 people is probably around 10% of the actual downloaders. Even though he assumed 100% uptake, his numbers work with a 10% uptake which I would happily argue is a fair count of downloaded-instead-of-purchased viewers.

Taking random guesses is fine and all... when someone isn't in court. But can they provide hard proof of their claims? Why are copyright thugs not held to the same standard other people are? It seems like they just whine, "Real justice is hard! Make it easier for me to just accuse people of infringing upon my copyrights and win based solely on my own claims!" and then they get what they want.

I guess that's what happens when our worthless 'representatives' are so easily bribed.

Judgements are usually the first category to get discharged. It has always been this way. The only exception is if the lawsuit is over something that cannot be discharged even if it was outside of a lawsuit, such as student loan debt awarded by judgement.

So if it's a civil suit (as it is so far) then he has a chance to discharge it, but the criminal cases would be 100% non-dischargeable, as everything is either costs, fines, or restitution. But yes, looks like the non-fraud civil suits are more dischargeable than I thought.

Let's say that one pay-per-view cost, say, $32 (for ease of the maths).

Let's say that a thousand people downloaded it (likely MUCH more). That is a direct loss of $32,000 to the content creator (without even needing to fabricate things, because that content was pay-per-view).

Let's say that a thousand people downloaded it (likely MUCH more). That is a direct loss of $32,000 to the content creator (without even needing to fabricate things, because that content was pay-per-view).

You can't assume that. Of those 1,000, how many saw the $32 pricetag on the PPV and decided they would rather do without? Or, put another way, for practically ANYTHING, how much more popular is it if it is free? How many own a Ferrari? Now compare to how many would accept a Ferrari if you gave them away with no strings attached. There are none in my neighborhood now, but there would be quite a few if they were giving them away.

If he actually does get the $32m fine then that just means he'll be paying a small sum every month until he hits the statute of limitation.

What? What is this "statute of limitation"? And why do you think he'll be paying a small amount each month? If he can't pay he'll be forced into bankruptcy, unless the winner is willing to accept some other arrangement. But they won't. They want to break him.

Murders will get 20 to life in the United States or the death penalty. If they get out early, they will be branded as violent convicts for the rest of their life. The time that they do spend behind bars will lead to a kind of emotional castration that many, if not most, former inmates do not fully recover from. No, murderers certainly do not have it easier. $32M is definitely painful, but the final amount the uploader would pay will be a fraction of that amount. The high dollar value is there to maintain th

Come now, it wasn't some teenager uploading his music collection. It was someone systematically ripping an entire series of works and taking paypal donations. That's the moral equivalent of duplicating the latest movie and having a network of sellers flogging the movie outside all theatres on DVD for $1 a pop.

I hear that, and it's a good point. Although one should take note that the $32M is only alleged damages, and not the actual ruling. You can sue for any amount, but that doesn't mean the court will see merit in it.

That makes sense IF the person made some sort of mistake. For example if someone posts 'hey guys check out this crazy punch from UFC' and uploads short clip of it to you tube. The probably helps the company as free advertising more than any sort of copyright infringement.Someone who uploads 124 full fights to several different sites knows exactly what they're doing and are just give the finger to Zuffa; they deserve the full fury of the law upon them.

If it has not been licensed here, it is still copyright infringment, and is certainly harmful.

And arbitrarily deciding that particular groups of people cannot gain access to content is not harmful?There are MANY people in the world who are unable to access certain content in any legal way, and yet they can still read about it online.

Is it fair that i shouldn't be able to watch the UFC PPV events but i can read the results all over the internet, so that when/if they are finally made available here i already know whats going to happen?

I'm unaware of if Horriblesubs asks for/gets donations. But as far as (at least their initial reasons) reasoning for going after Crunchyroll specifically is "revenge". CR built their "brand name" on a mountain of infringing content uploaded/maintained by others/volunteers/call them what you will (Even had a subscription offering). Then after they reached a certain level of popularity, they leveraged that for venture capital to "go legit" and scrapped the original site. This, as you might imagine, garnered a

What they really need is a webcam on everyone's TV (at their own expense or the taxpayers', it doesn't matter which) to record who's watching which shows so customers can't invite neighbours around to commit copyright infringement/breach of contract. We also need to divert more law enforcement and legal resources away from frivolous crimes like robbery, murder, and rape to stopping/preventing these heinous copyright infringement crimes that are dragging society down into immorality and depravity. Perhaps we

Seriously can you throw out court cases because the plaintiff accuses of too much bullshit? Copyright infringement, yeah I get that. But fraud? How is torrenting a video fraud unless the man's username was OfficialUFCDistributor or some other misrepresentation like that.

But breach of contract? That should be a simple one. Show me the signed contract and THEN we can talk about how it was breached. Given that the person is going by username, and a company called XYZ corp I'm willing to bet Zuffa doesn't have a legally binding contract unless they routinely make contracts without any identities.

They were targeting the individual who ripped their shows from a cable TV broadcast. It probably seemed logical to them that someone who has cable TV signed a contract in order to get it.

As they found out, people who make a career out of torrenting tend to live in their parents basement (and thus use their parents' cable subscription) so the "fraud" and "breach of contract" will likely be dropped.

They were targeting the individual who ripped their shows from a cable TV broadcast. It probably seemed logical to them that someone who has cable TV signed a contract in order to get it.

As they found out, people who make a career out of torrenting tend to live in their parents basement (and thus use their parents' cable subscription) so the "fraud" and "breach of contract" will likely be dropped.

He probably torrented it after downloading it from somewhere else. Turning a TV broadcast into a torrentable file takes some work.

That person almost certainly agreed to a contract when they agreed to receive the copyright content into their devices that they subscribe to.

Thus, breach of contract is EASY, and the contract will be written (or at the very least, legally enforceable - e.g. an online purchase contract).

Additionally, if you are doing things in the contract to misrepresent yourself (e.g. a business rather than a personal, rebroadcasting rather than personal use), or even just modifying cable / satellite systems to illegally

The only person/company who can sue him for breach of contract is his content provider. He has no contract with the content producer (unless they are one and the same which is unlikely for a small sports promotion company like Zuffa).

Now if Comcast owned the UFC rights, and Comcast was the cable company from which he ripped his service *that* would be breach of contract. Or if Comcast wants to sue him on behalf of Zuffa that too could be a breach of contract.

These people will never reign in their greed. The upside is that they do not keep silent when they have identified somebody. So this can be used as a benchmark for a general anonymity level. Now, the distribution problem for filesharing is solved. Time to tackle the anonymity problem for distribution of large files. TOR is not going to cut it, at least not in its current form. Too slow and the only way to do anything would be via hidden service. Any bright CS PhD candidates out there that do not fear the me

Well, it mainly depends on what side you root for. If getting caught breaking the law is the problem, and if you consider the law unjust, then the obvious solution for you is a better way to circumvent the law.

Federal prohibition of alcohol got repealed about a decade later as it was found to be unworkable. State prohibition of cannabis is getting repealed as well, with federal executive orders to respect state decriminalization. But in this case there's no prohibition: you could always start an MMA club and release your own videos to compete with UFC.

WWE knows that a lot of their PPVs and DVDs get pirated, so how do they deal with it? They start selling access to everything for only $10 a month. Monthly PPVs cost $40-$60 typically, and DVDs cost $10-$20. Now, fans can get all of that, with no work, on pretty much every platform, for only $10 a month on a six month commitment. I know many people who have subscribed when they would've used other means to obtain the content before.

Seriously, downloading from a torrent site without using a VPN located in another country is stupid. Being a high profile content ripper / seeder without using a VPN or seedbox is jaw droppingly dangerous, especially if you live in the US. (Personally very happy with AirVPN BTW.)

Before American football and basketball were adapted from rugby and team handball, the big three sports in the United States were baseball, horse racing, and boxing. So for people who deny that MMA and boxing are sports, I have two questions: What is a sport in the first place? And under your definition, why do MMA and boxing not qualify

It should be sued for passing it off as a "sport" but "entertainment" is determined by the number of idiots wanting to watch, and of those, UFC apparently doesn't have a shortage. So it is "entertainment" even if you don't find it entertaining.